


Fake poison

by darlingpanfanfic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Darling Pan - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2170146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingpanfanfic/pseuds/darlingpanfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being almost poisoned by Dreamshade is the most terrible fate Wendy could ever run into, right?<br/>Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fake poison

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Darling Pan Week  
> Day: four  
> Theme: poison

Wendy got lost.

The part of the island she finds herself in wasn’t familiar at all. And even if the jungle had the power to look all the same in Neverland, she could tell that she’s never stepped in there before.

She wasn’t even into the jungle anymore.

She got completely lost.

If she’d have really thought it through, she’d say that running away from Pan’s camp late at night hadn’t really been the _best_ idea.

But then again, coming back to Neverland even if it was to safe Baelfire, sweet, innocent _Bae_ , really hadn’t been the best idea.

But she was sick and tired of Pan’s tyrannical behavior, of his stupid games, of him forcing her to watch the Lost boys fighting - _You don’t wanna miss the show, Wendy, do you?_ -until they _bleed_.

And he wasn’t even pleased until her own dress was stained by the redness of their wounds.

Until in some way, _she_ bleed too.

That night, she sneaked out of her treehouse before Pan could came to get her to the camp and she ran away into the jungle as fast as she could.

She ran between branches and fronds until her legs hurt and her breath almost run out.  

She took a path surrounded by rocks and cliffs, and climbed up until she reached the top.

Wendy bends over, rests her hands on her knees and tries to catch her breath. She looks down and sees her ankles and the hem of her dress filthy with dirt and then she looks back up.

There was nothing around her but rocks and thorn bushes and darkness. Only the sea, far behind reflected the pearly circle of the moon.

The wind blows lightly but it’s enough to make her shiver.

She was a _fool_.

Pan would have found her anywhere on Neverland. It was a miracle he hadn’t found her already.

“You made quite the _stroll_ , Wendy”

His voice, deep and kind of amused, reaches her ears and when she looks behind her, Pan’s silhouette is standing against a rock, his arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his face.

“I don’t think this is the safest place for you to wander around at the night” he says uncrossing his arms and stepping closer to her.

“Anything is better than being near you!” she spats bitter, her body automatically drawing back.

“Oh, you are so _cruel_ , Wendy” he mocks her, his features twisting into an artificially pained expression, before he turns them quickly into a smirk.                                                                                           

Wendy just glares him and Pan moves forward.

“Let’s go back to the camp” he orders resolutely, his gaze suddenly serious, his lips pursed in a thin line.

“No” she replies angrily and takes another step back, her nightgown brushes the rock face behind her. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“ _Wendy_ ” he warns.

 “Pan”

Wendy lifts her chin. She doesn’t call him Peter. She stopped calling him Peter a long time ago.

They glare at each other for a second before Pan moves right in front of her, towering over her in all his tallness.

“I said let’s _go back_ to the camp” he hisses, teeth clenched, his voice deep and rumbling into the silence of the night.

“And _I_ said I’m not going anywhere with you!” she shouts, obstinately, her fists clenched on her sides.

A flash of anger, pure and violent, passes through Pan’s eyes and Wendy feels a shiver slipping down her spine.

He grabs her wrist and pulls, hard.

“Let go of me!” she yells and twists her arm, trying to free it from his grip as hard as she can.

Pan’s fingers close tighter around her wrist and Wendy moans in pain.

She draws back, still struggling, her foot slipping on the ground.

She would have fallen right into the thorn bush standing next to her, if Pan hadn’t caught her by the waist and pulled her flush against his chest.

Wendy gasps loudly at the hard, sudden collision with his upper body and at the same time she hears something ripping behind her.

She turns around and sees the hem of her nightgown tore apart. A piece of the dress was entangled in the thorns. A black, sticky juice staining it.

She flattens her palms on his chest and tries to push him away but Pan’s grip doesn’t loosen a bit.

“You stupid, _stubborn_ girl” he mutters under his teeth, eyes flickering over the thorn bush.

Before she can try to move again, his magic teleport both of them back to the camp.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The day after, at the camp the Lost boys are playing with bows and arrows.

With Pan finally disappeared somewhere in the jungle, Wendy stands up from the log she was sitting on and marches straight to Felix.

 

When he spots her silhouette walking towards him, Felix sighs and resists the urge to roll his eyes.

If Wendy wanted to talk to him alone, it could only mean _trouble._

 

He remembers quite vividly the last time she ran to him to talk.

_Her hair tousled, her nightgown crumpled, her eyes glittering with tears._

_“Felix, I know he told you where Bae is.” A mix of desperation “Please” she pulled at his arm “Please, Felix tell me where he is” and determination “so we can go back home. You too, all of us!” in her voice._

_“My home is right here” Felix spited coolly, quickly shoving away his arm from her grasp._

_Wendy flinched a little, but didn’t stop. “No, it’s not. But we can all go back. Even the Boys.” she told him “They trust you. With you by my side, we can turn them against him” she continued hopefully, “Together, we can find a way to escape for good!” foolishly._

_Felix chuckled. A cruel, dark sound coming out of his mouth. After spending so much time with Pan he’d even started to sound like him._

_“Keep dreaming, Wendy” he mocked, harshly “After all, that’s one of the thing Neverland is for, isn’t it?”_

_And if there had been a bitter-regretful?- look in his eyes, Felix just wished Wendy never saw it._

_And she didn’t._

 

Wendy stops, standing right in front of Felix.

“The poison Pan uses to dip the arrows into, where does it come from?” she asks not bothering with preambles.  

“A plant called Dreamshade” Felix answers, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Why do you ask?” Something was up with her, he sensed it.

“It’s a bush with thorns?” she inquires, ignoring him.

“Yes. It’s the deadliest plant on the island. If you’re pricked by it, the poison kills you as soon as it reaches your heart”

 “And there’s no antidote?”she presses.

“There is. A water from a waterfall” Felix murmurs “ _Why_ are you asking so many questions?” he asks then, out of sudden, his eyes still narrowed.

 Something was totally up with her, but Felix just couldn’t understand what.

“The water can save you?”

“Yes, but it has a price”

“A price?” Wendy asks, suddenly confused.

 “If you want to call it that.” Felix shrugs lightly. “Once you drink that water you can never leave Neverland”  

_My home is right here._

Felix looks at her eyes, they look pensive, absorbed and then…

“Did _you_ get poisoned, Wendy?” he asks quickly. There’s no real concern in his voice but some kind of alarm is sneaking into it.

She couldn’t get poisoned. Pan never kept his eyes off of her all morning unlit he left only minutes ago.

Wendy’s been sitting on a corner of the camp all this time and Felix is absolutely sure she didn’t get even _remotely_ close to the arrows of the boys.

“No, no, I didn’t” Wendy shakes his head quickly and Felix can’t tell if she’s lying or not but when Wendy looks up at him, his eyes are stormy, troubled.

She _couldn’t_ be poisoned. _He_ never kept his eyes off of her either since Pan left. Exactly like he said.

Then, Felix drops his gaze.

He doesn’t care if she is poisoned.

Pan would be more than _happy_ to take care of her problem on his own.

After he’s punished _him_ maybe, but still.

“Well, even if you _were…_ ” he hisses, a nasty glint playing in his eyes “… given your position, it really wouldn’t be a big deal.” he tells her “Poison or not, Pan will never let you leave any way”

And if Wendy hadn’t seen for herself what Pan did just the night before, she’d have said exactly the same thing.

_“Are you hurt?” Pan asked her, once they were back to the camp already desert._

_His eyes were wide, his voice high, restless like he was… worried?_

_It couldn’t be, but he had that look on his face… Wendy had never seen him like that and it made her speechless for a moment._

_“Answer me! Are you hurt?” Pan raised his voice higher and when she still didn’t speak, he grabbed both of her arms to examine them himself._

_He even attempted to pull up her nightgown, looking for any possible hidden wounds but she pushed his hands away._

_“No, no, I’m not!” she shouted, slipping away from him. Because she didn’t want him to touch her. Not more than he already had for that night._

_“I’m not hurt!”she repeated and he scrutinized her face as to see if she was lying._

_She looked back at him, eyebrows frown in a mix of anger and confusion._

_She wasn’t hurt. And she wasn’t fool enough to lie to him._

_She didn’t have even a scratch._

_Apart from the red print of his fingers around her wrist._

_“Go back to the treehouse” Pan thundered “before I drag you myself”_

_And for once, Wendy listened._

 

That night, Wendy was sitting on her bed in her treehouse, readying to go to sleep, when Pan appears behind her.

He always had the habit to sneak into her room without her ever noticing and she hated it. But it’s not like she could do many things about it.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, eyes looking up at him, her features hardening immediately.

“I just wanted to say goodnight” he says, placing both of his hands on the headboard of the bed.

Wendy narrows her eyes.

He _isn’t_ there to say goodnight. He never stands on ceremony.

He never bothers with pleasantries or good manners or whatever anybody else would call appropriate behavior.

Most likely, he is there to check on her. _Again_. And she still isn’t sure of the reason why.

“Well, you _did_. “she says, her voice and eyes equally cold. “You can leave now”

 She knows Pan hates it when she gives him the cold shoulder but she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t care what he says. Everything about him is a _trick_.

Probably what she thought to hear in his voice the night before wasn’t even concern.

_Are you hurt?_

He’d shouted, rumbled,

_Answer me! Are you hurt?_

… like he was _scared_ for her.

Probably, _surely_ , it was just another of his twisted games.

He always pretends to care.

 

The line of Pan’s eyebrows harden, his lips parts ready to spit something harsh, something that will make her regret she talked to him that way.

“What’s the matter, Wendy?” he says instead, voice mocking “Did you have a _bad_ day?”

“Why did you do it?”she asks quickly, looking straight into his eyes.

Because she is not gonna sleep another night with his face haunting her, making her wonder if she only dreamt that flash of terror in his eyes.

His fingerprints on her wrist were _real_ but even if he’d just pretended, she wanted to know.

She hadn’t been poisoned. Pan made sure of that the night before.

She just wanted to understand _why_.

“Did what?” Pan asks.

“Why did you save me from that Dreamshade last night?”she spills and then, she adds “I asked Felix” because she’s sure Pan knows anyway and there’s no point in denying it.

She’s sure Felix told him of their chat. He _always_ tells him. Even if Pan probably wouldn’t even need it.

Felix isn’t on her side.

And the girl who thought they could be friends was the same _foolish_ girl who thought she could find Baelfire in the labyrinth of the island Pan created. The labyrinth which responded to him and him only.

Felix isn’t on her side. _No one_ in Neverland is on her side.

But that isn’t reason she’d gone to Felix.

She just wanted to know, wanted to be sure what she thought was true. That that plant he’d saved her from was poison.

What she found out was more than she could guess.

 “If I had been poisoned by that plant the antidote would forced me to stay here forever, just like you wanted, so why-”

“You don’t know what I _want!_ ” Pan cuts her short, voice high, eyebrows frowning, his eyes quickly turning dark.

His mind flying somewhere else.

Some _time_ else.

_What do you want to do now?_

_Have you ever seen a fairy?_

_There are also fairies?_

_Yes, plenty of them._

_Why are the other children crying?_

_Don’t worry about them._

_But.._

_Come with me. I’ll show you the Pixie Hollow, it’s where the fairies live._

_You could stay, you know…_

_Stay? Here?_

_Yes. If you wish it._

The heart of the truest believer. That’s what Peter Pan wanted.

Not her.

_Didn’t you hear me? I said go back home! Go back home and take your thimble with you, I don’t want it!_

_Not_ her.

_I don’t want you!_

 

But his statement lingers there, in the air of the room and for some seconds Wendy feels weight down by it.

_You don’t know what I want._

It was like he wanted to imply something.

Something she couldn’t even dare to _dream_ about.

Because once, just _once_ , she did.

The first time she came to Neverland, the first time she met him.

_Mermaids? Seriously? Are they really as beautiful as they say?_

_They can drown you beautifully. So I wouldn’t get too close to the water, if I were you._

She _did_ dream it once…

_What is that?_

_Oh, this. It’s a thimble._

_A thimble?_

_Yes. Here, you can have it, if you wish it._

_Do you? Do you wish to stay?_

_I… I don’t know… my family, my brothers… they’ll all be worried if I don’t come back and…_

 

… and it destroyed her.

_Then, go home! Go back home! I’m tired of you! I don’t want you here anymore!_

 

Pan seems to notice the fracture in her look, in her face, in her _heart_.

And for a moment he thought it mirrored exactly what he felt in his own.

His knuckles turns almost white around the bars of the headboard, and it has to remind himself he did _not_ have a heart.

_A thimble?_

Not the one he needed, anyway.

The heart of the truest believer. That’s the only heart he needed.

_Here, you can have it,_

Not hers.

_if you wish it._

Not hers.

 

“Because that way, it wouldn’t have been fair, would it?” Pan hisses  and something in his voice sounds like honesty.

But Wendy doesn’t catch it. _Not_ anymore.

“And using my brothers’ life against me is?” she snaps, an angry line wrinkling her eyebrows.

_No! I’ll never stay here with you! I’ll find Baelfire and go back home!_

_Oh, you’re gonna stay and you know why?_

Pan smirks slowly, wicked. “My game, my rules”

_Because if you don’t, your brothers will die._

 

 

“What difference would it have made?” Wendy asks him, her eyes piercing into his, burning, like she wanted to read a soul she already knew he had lost.

Pan’s eyes darken ever more under the flickering light of the lamp.

He doesn’t speak.

 

Maybe Pan wouldn’t have let her drink the water.

Maybe he would have let her _die_.

It’s not like she was someone _vital_ to him, after all. He was only keeping her to threaten her brothers into doing his biddings. And for his own twisted amusement.

He could always kill them all and find others pawns to use as he pleased.

Maybe that’s _exactly_ what he’d done if she’d been poisoned. 

Let her die.

Wendy is scared to realize that a part of her thought maybe, just _maybe_ , it wouldn’t have been the worst thing to ever happen to her.

And it didn’t matter if she felt, she _still_ could feel his arm clenching around her waist, his fingers digging hard into the fabric of her nightgown as he wanted to keep her away from that plant at all costs.

His grip had been so firm, so solid it had hurt.

But for the first time, she felt like he didn’t want to hurt her on purpose, but… _protect_ her.

Never let her fall on the ground again.

And she felt the ice he forced her to surround her heart with- so she wouldn’t feel anymore, just like he’d done- melting a little.

 

_What difference would have made?_

It’d have made all the difference in the world, Pan wanted to tell her.

 _All_ the difference in the world.

The possibility that, if she got poisoned she’d be trapped in the island with him forever, clouded his mind in a terrifying way the night before.

And it shouldn’t have. It _shouldn’t_ have.

Because that’s exactly what he’d planned for her.

_You’ll never leave Neverland again._

Tostay in the island with him. _Forever_.

But in that moment he just wanted to make sure she was… _safe_.

_Are you hurt?_

The thought of her dying could not even cross his mind.

_Answer me! Are you hurt?_

But the price he’d have to pay to save her suddenly became as horrifying…

_You can’t trap me in here!_

_I can do whatever I want. This is my island!_

… as the imagine of her heart stopping.

Because Wendy came back.

She came back to Neverland on her will.

Not for him.

_I’m here for Baelfire. I’m here to bring him back home with me._

_Not_ for him. For Baelfire.

But she came back and with her, she’d brought back that part of him he tried so hard to bury, to _destroy_.

The part of him that wanted her to stay…

_Do you?_

… just because she wished it.

_Do you wish to stay?_

 

“You’re never gonna let me leave anyway, do you?” Wendy asks, her voice softer, weaker.

 

For one moment, just _one_ moment, he wanted, _craved_ , to tell her he’ll let.

_You’re not going home._

Tell her that someday, he may change his mind.

_You’re going to stay here and this time,_

Pan breaths in slowly. His fingers still contracting on the bed’s headboard.

_you’ll never leave Neverland again._

 

He did it once before.

He let her leave.

Because he didn’t _want_ her.

Because he needed to find the truest believer and he couldn’t waste his time with a _girl_.

Not because of any other reason.

 _Not_ because a voice in the back of his mind told him if she didn’t wanna stay, he couldn’t really force her. That maybe she was better off with her family.

 _Without_ him.

Pan blinks. And the moment, the _memories,_ pass.

“The reason you’ll stay in Neverland” he says, his eyes hardening instantly “will _only_ be because Idecided so”

 

Wendy lowers her head -he doesn’t want to look at him any longer- and smiles bitterly.

Of course.

Peter Pan was the _king_ and he could never miss a chance to remind it to her.

The king decided and everybody else obeyed.

And he’d decided her fate long ago.

_You’ll never leave Neverland again._

Wendy’s eyes falls down on her lap.

Her nightgown is still ripped, the hem shorter where it used to be the piece that got entangled into the Dreamshade.

She’s tired. She doesn’t want him there.

She just wants to go to sleep and… not cry, _not_ cry, because she’s not a little, hopeless girl anymore, no matter how much Pan makes her feel like one.

Pan’s eyes follow her gaze.

He lifts his arm and with a swirl of his wrist, the fabric of her dress turns whole again.

The rip gone, like it’s never been there in the first place.  

And Wendy knew, like everything else on the island, that was just the _last_ of his pretenses.


End file.
